Dream Girl
by CharlesTheBold
Summary: Luke is in Massachusetts, and Grace is in Italy, and never the twain shall meet. But it helps to have the Lord of the Universe on their side. PLEASE REVIEW.
1. Grace's Visit

**DREAM GIRL**

_(Disclaimer: I have no business connection with JOAN. My only purpose in writing this story is to have fun and maybe share it)_

_(Author's Note: This story is part of a series that takes place after the JOAN OF ARCADIA TV show ended. A listing of the other stories is on my profile. The main events that have happened since May 2005 are _

_(1) Joan has let Grace, Luke, and Adam into her secret _

_(2) Joan and Adam got married in June, 2006._

_(3) Joan, Adam, and Grace have graduated from high school. Luke was jumped a year and allowed to graduate with them. Now Luke is at Harvard, Joan and Adam at a small college named Baconia U., and Grace is in Europe working with a famine-relief agency._

This story starts in September, 2006)

**Chapter 1 Grace's visit**

I made my way across the central courtyard. I still had not gotten over how attractive the school grounds were, compared with my high school. Arcadia High was, as Grace had once put it, a box to keep students in. This was, in theory, a garden where knowledge could grow.

Still, the place was not ideal. Grace was gone, and Grace could make a biology closet seem like heaven. Nor was I surrounded by loved ones: the parents, Joan, Kevin, and Lily. Oh, I got along well with my roommate Tom, who talked half-seriously of someday writing the Great African-American Novel. But I hadn't gotten to the point of telling him the big secret about the Lord of the Universe paying visits. Much less did I feel like telling anybody else.

Taking my mind of my brooding, I saw Tom actually walking from the other direction.

"Hi, Luke," he said. "I wanted to tell you not to wait for me tonight. I've got a history paper, and I think it will take me up to about 10:30 in the library. And the rest of the time I will spend with Babs, as a reward for good behavior."

"Okay," I said. I was still startled at the frankness with which others discussed their love affairs, compared with Grace's secretiveness when we first got together.

"I've told you, Luke, that Babs knows lots of girls. If you want a date— "

We'd been through this several times before. "Thanks, but I've got a girl."

"Sure – in Italy. And planning to move even further away soon. Don't get me wrong, Luke; I admire your friend for devoting herself to making the world a better place. But it's scarcely a good basis for a love relationship."

"We'll try to make it work," I insisted.

"Well, good luck with that."

I continued on my walk. Ahead of me, a groundskeeper was raking early fall leaves off the path. I hesitated, not wanting to get in his way.

"That's very considerate of you, Luke," he said, as if I'd expressed my intention and given my name.

It was one of the God avatars, I realized.

"—but perhaps you should be thinking more of yourself."

"Why? I'm not a very interesting subject," I said, borrowing a joke from THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST.

"But you are important to you, Luke. And your grades aren't doing well."

"It's my first term away from home. Culture shock."

"Is it all that you're away from, Luke?"

I sighed. "You know what I'm feeling. I wish Grace was around. But I know she isn't, and why she isn't, and that's that. Is this a hint that you want me to go join her? I thought everybody agreed that I was better off coming here to improve my mind."

"I'm not hinting anything, Luke. I just want you to acknowledge the problem."

"What's the good of acknowledging a problem when there's no answer?"

But the Groundskeeper God just waved and walked to another patch of leaves. Great. As contacts with the Divine went, this was one of the fuzziest. Had I been handed a mission or not? Maybe I'd know when the mission came up, or when it whacked me on the head.

I went to the computer lab and did a little work on my GNA simulation program. It had been obvious from the start that actually trying to synthesize a variant of DNA in a test tube would be difficult and expensive. Computer simulation was the way to go in the early stage. Once I had gotten the kinks out, my mentors explained, I could show it to some influential people and possibly get some funding. The one catch was that people always wanted to know what GNA stood for. I'd say "Grace's Nucleic Acid" and they'd be curious who Grace was, at a time when I'd want to get my mind off our separation.

After adding a subroutine to prune the population of dead-end developments, and I went back to my dorm. With Tom gone I didn't have anything particularly planned for tonight. Maybe talk to Joan and her husband by Email. I was composing a possible message in my mind as I unlocked the door to my room.

Grace was standing by the window.

She was wearing pajamas, slightly strange pajamas that she must have bought in Europe. She looked disoriented.

"Grace?"

"Luke!" she shouted in relief, running into my arms. It was wonderful to touch her like this again, but even so I was aware that she was not hugging me just out of love. Something had badly frightened her, and Grace does not frighten easily.

"Grace, how did you get here?"

"Where is here?"

"My dorm room in Harvard. Cambridge, Massachusetts."

"Last I remember, I was going to bed in my flat in Rome. Falling asleep. Oh, I get it. I'm having a dream."

"This isn't a dream, Grace."

"How do you know?"

"Because I'm real, not a dream character."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm conscious of my own existence. As Descartes said, I think therefore I am."

"Oh, don't go all dork on me. We're together, let's do something about it. At least talk about something else."

We sat on the bed. Suddenly Grace asked, "Have you met any pretty girls at Harvard?" It did not sound accusing. It sounded teasing and unconcerned, rather as if Joan had asked it.

"Grace, you know I won't get interested in pretty girls when you're in my life. _Other_ pretty girls," I hastily amended.

She laughed. "Thanks for the 'other'. But I wish you would find a girl. It would make me feel less guilty about that guy—"

"We agreed not to discuss that again, Grace." She had gotten entangled with an Italian guy named Antonio, going swimming and horseback riding with him. I was convinced that it was a matter of loneliness and culture shock and that her real passion was for me. But Grace had an odd notion of tit-for-tat. She wanted me to tat for her, um-- "Let's talk about something else."

"We ship out next month for an African province called Modishko," she said. "It'll be the height of the planting season."

"Planting?" This was September. "Oh, spring south of the equator."

She nodded. "Not likely to be online, or with a cell tower nearby. It'll be hard to communicate privately."

"We'll survive. Up to a few years ago that kind of separation was the normal lot of humanity."

"Well, we're together NOW, though I don't know how it happened. Let's take advantage, OK?"

She hugged me. We exchanged a lot of kisses, and she sank back on the bed, pulling me with her.

I don't know how far we would have gone. Neither of us had "protection", and we certainly didn't want Grace's plans to be derailed by a pregnancy. But the problem was solved when Grace suddenly vanished.

I uttered a few rude words that were not usually part of my vocabulary, and looked wildly around my room to search for a transporter beam or something. Grace had left nothing behind, not even a whiff of perfume, which she never wore. Had she ever been here in Cambridge? Or was I going crazy?

TBC


	2. Luke's Visit

**DREAM GIRL**

**Chapter 2 Luke's visit**

_SQUAWKSQUAWKSQUAWKSQUAWK_

I hit the alarm clock with such force that I nearly smashed it. But no, it survived to wake me up on other days. At least the blow allowed me to express some frustration.

During the night I had a weird dream, that I had somehow been moved to Luke's dorm room in Cambridge. Then, just as things were getting interesting, I woke up again, untouched. I had, to be sure, promised to be true to Luke during a long period of separation. But I didn't like losing the chance of fun just when it seemed within my grasp. Or was it within my grasp? It was just a dream, after all.

The weirdest thing was that it was chronologically accurate. To me it was the middle of the night; to Luke it was later evening. Just the difference you'd expect between Rome and Massachusetts.

I began the morning routine, with only half my mind on it. I took off my pajama top, threw it in the laundry basket, and rummaged in my dresser drawer for a bra.

"I wouldn't turn around right now if I were you," said a familiar, apologetic voice.

"Luke?!"

"I mean," he went on pedantically, "I've seen your breasts before, but only when you were cool with it. I didn't want you to accidently expose—"

I turned around anyway. Luke was standing in my bedroom door in drab American pajamas. "Luke, what are you doing here?"

"The same thing you were doing in my dorm earlier this evening. Meaning, I don't know. I thought I had fallen asleep. I'd think this were a dream if it wasn't for what happened earlier."

"Just stand there a minute, OK?" I picked up my cell phone, or _telefonino_ as the Italians called it, and punched in Marghareta's number.

"_Pronto_," said a sleepy voice. _"Ma non sono troppo pronta. Chi e la?"_

"_Sono Gracia," _I said, and continued in Italian. "I couldn't remember what day that _telenovela _would be on TV."

"_You woke me up to ask that? Wednesday! Now get off my ass." CLICK_

_Marghareta was definitely annoyed, but if she remembers the conversation at all later, I'll know this was not a dream_. I was starting to come up with another theory.

"I think God's behind this," I said. "Cowgirl God rode up on her horse yesterday when I was working in the fields, asking if I missed you."

Luke nodded. "I talked to God yesterday in the form of a college groundskeeper, and He told me the same thing. So maybe He's doing us a favor."

"She doesn't do that very often. Mostly it's just 'enjoy the good ripples'." We were used to the mismatch of the pronoun. "She wouldn't heal your brother, or help Joan when she was miserable in Crazy Camp."

"He was worried about my grades," Luke mused. "Maybe it's crucial to His plan, whatever it is, that I make good grades and impress the faculty."

"Or that I focus on my agricultural work without mooning over you. If She won't tell us, I suppose it's impossible to know."

"Or whether we'll be able to keep visiting periodically? Is this the last time, or what?"

"Impossible to know that, too."

"I give up. Let's just enjoy being together."

"Okay."

Luke looked at the bed. "Um, do you happen to have some 'protection' in your flat?"

I had to giggle at the direct question. Luke certainly wasn't the coax-the-girl-into-bed type, and I wouldn't have respected him if he was. Then I realized that my answer wouldn't be encouraging.

"No. Why would I, when the only guy I would ever consider sleeping with is thousands of kilometers away? Who would have thought you'd just materialize here? Otherwise, I'd love to—"

"OK. Let's forget it. But could you cover yourself a little more? I mean, they're lovely, but rather distracting." He gave a shy smile at this.

I looked down at myself and laughed in embarrassment. I had been about to put on my bra when Luke materialized and distracted me. Of course I wasn't showing him anything he hadn't seen before.

A minute later and a little more decent, I sat on the bed beside Luke. "Do you have any news that was too personal to put in Emails or phone calls?" The four of us agreed some time ago never to directly discuss the God connection over electronic communications. Too much danger of a record falling into the wrong hands. But now that we were physically separated, it was difficult to exchange the crucial news at all.

"Yeah, there's one thing. Mom Emailed me a few days ago. Asked me if a dream ever told me to do something."

"Wow. What did you say?"

"I was real evasive. Said that the subconscious could convey information in a dream that the conscious mind had suppressed. Pascal said centuries ago that 'The heart has its reasons, of which Reason knows nothing.' But it sounded to me like Mom may have had a vision from You-Know-Who."

"But why now? This late in her life? Not when she was a teenager like us?"

"Don't tell Mom that you think mid-forties is 'late'." Luke said with amusement. Then he went very glum. "Um, when Mom was a teenager something horrible happened to her. I can't say what, because I promised not to repeat it. But it poisoned her religious beliefs for years, and probably ruined whatever plan He had for her."

"Then why didn't He stop the horrible thing and save His plan?"

"I don't know."

"I hate being part of a plan we don't know about."

"We have free will. We can pull out."

"But maybe it's a good plan that I'd want to be part of, if I understood it."

"You ever read the science-fiction novel FOUNDATION? Some guy finds a way to control the future, but it only works as long as people don't know what's going on. Me? I went through a skeptical period this summer, but I decided to give in and trust. Will you stick with the plan for my sake?"

I gazed at him with love. "I will."

We hugged and kissed passionately. This time the powers that be waited until we done, looking at each other contentedly, before taking Luke away.

That morning on the way to the farm, I stopped by a _farmacia_ and bought some "protection". I was resolved to keep a sample in my pocket at all times.

When and if some miracle brought Luke and me together again, I'd be ready.

TBC

(Author's Footnote: Marghareta is making an Italian pun, between _Pronto_ meaning hello, and _Pronto_ meaning ready. She says Hello, but she's not ready for a conversation this early in the morning.)


	3. Our Own Private World

**DREAM GIRL**

_(Author's Note: I decided to use an unusual narrative style for this final chapter. Think of Luke and Grace writing the story together)_

**Chapter 3 Our Own Private World**

All the next day we were tense. We didn't think we'd see each other popping up during the day; there seemed to be something, well, nocturnal about the whole thing. It required surrounding quiet and darkness, not the bustle of daytime.

All day Grace kept an eye out for CowGirl God, perking up every time she heard hoofbeats. But the horses were always the normal sort that belonged on the experimental farm.

On the train back to Rome, Grace decided to try another angle, getting out her cell and entering Marghareta's number.

"_Pronto?"_

"_Sono Gracia_. I wanted to apologize about this morning."

"What about this morning?"

"Waking you up, asking a stupid question about our favorite telenovela."

"I don't remember. I suppose I dropped off to sleep again and forgot about it."

"Um, OK, I'm glad I didn't deprive you of any sleep." Grace switched off, staring at the cell. Either Marghareta had a poor memory, or it really was a dream.

Several thousand kilometers away and several hours later, Luke met up with his roommate.

"Hi, Luke. Just wanted to warn you that I'll be away all night again."

"Okay," said Luke.

"Okay? You sound glad to be rid of me," Tom teased.

"Um—" Luke had to think quick; he certainly couldn't explain about us. "Actually, I may have found a new girl. But she's shy of visiting a guy's dorm room, doesn't want people to know—"

"Sure, I'll give you two your privacy. What's her name?"

Luke free-associated desperately. There was a famous woman in the last century named Grace -- "Um, Kelly. Her name's Kelly. But what's this project of yours that's keeping you up?" He added, hoping to change the subject.

"I'm doing a survey of classical writers of part-African ancestry. There are more of them than I realized. Alexander Pushkin, the Russian poet. Elizabeth Barett, who wrote 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways'. Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo, and his son wrote Camille. I'm looking in old archives for others. Not everything's on the Internet, particularly Victorian literature."

"Good luck with it."

"Thanks. And, um, Luke—"

"Yeah?"

"You know where my medicines and things are. If you and your Kelly girl need, ah, protection—"

"Yeah, thanks."

That evening Luke waited anxiously to see if Grace would appear again. But there was no sign of her. Was last night something special? Or was last night simply an elaborate pair of dreams? If he were to Email Grace now, would she even know what he was talking about? But he was afraid to do that, and besides, it was long past her bedtime, Rome time. Finally, bitterly disappointed, Luke lay down on his own bed and fell asleep.

Grace woke up on a rather ornate sofa, very different from her functional bedstead in the Roman flat. Where was she? Her surroundings were expensive yet oddly impersonal. A luxury hotel?

She went to the room's window and looked out. A city at night, but not her Rome. She could see a few lit signs, and they seemed to be Spanish, but not quite. One, of which she could see only half, seemed to read LISl. Lisbon, Portugal? If you went on a line from Rome to Cambridge, Lisbon was about the closest thing you could find to a midpoint and still be on dry land. A compromise location? That made sense. If any of this did.

She heard a noise outside the room, and felt shock. It occurred to her that she was in an unknown location, clad in nothing but her PJs. If there was a potential rapist around—

She spotted some double doors, in the wall to the left of the window. The keyhole was the old-fashioned Victorian type, large enough to spy through. She saw a splendidly furnished room, with a second pair of doors at the other side. A bespectacled boy had opened them a crack and was looking through.

"LUKE!"

"GRACE!"

We threw the doors open and dashed toward each other, colliding in the middle of the central room. The passion with which we held each other was a sign of how worried we had been, that the miracle would not happen again.

By some unspoken signal we released each other, freeing our hands so that each of us could take something out of a pajama pocket. We held them up and grinned as we realized that each of us had brought "protection". Great minds think alike.

KNOCKNOCKNOCK.

"Um, we're not supposed to have visitors, are we?" asked Luke.

"How the hell should I know?"

He raised his voice. "Who's there?"

"Room service for our special guests," called a Latino-accented male voice.

"Could you send him away, Luke? I'm not wearing enough."

"Ok." Feeling a bit half-naked himself, Luke went reluctantly to the room's main door and opened it, finding a Portuguese bellboy. "Um, gracias, but we don't need anything."

"Are you sure, Luke? Wouldn't the two of you like some explanations?"

Grace rolled up her eyes. "Oh, my G-d."

"That's right, Grace," He called out. "May I come in?"

"Why not? You're all-seeing; you must have seen me in PJs before now." And without them, she added silently.

We settled in the comfortable chairs of the suite, and G-d explained.

"You two have accepted difficult missions," said G-d. "Grace, you're willing to leave the comforts of your own culture to help people in need. Luke, you've accepted a demanding college, not just for the knowledge and prestige, but because you know your education will eventually let you create new inventions that will benefit mankind. But you two are also miserable, because you long for each other. Not just sexually. There is a bond between you that can only be satisfied by personal contact, and which today's communication technology cannot help."

We nodded, our arms around each other's waists.

"It's an insoluble dilemma. So I decided to help you out and solve it. A few nights each month, if both of you request it of me, I will override the normal space-time metric of the universe and let you be together."

"'Override the normal functioning' – that sounds like a miracle," Luke said. "You told Joan that you didn't like to do overt miracles in modern times."

"Yes, because it's good that humans believe in an orderly universe. But Luke, you already believe in an orderly universe. And Grace—"

"I'll take Luke's word for it," she said hastily.

"And the rest of the humanity will not know of this exception. To paraphrase a human epigram, what happens in the dreamworld stays in the dreamworld. Nothing will go back to the real world except your memories. Grace, you will not be able to conceive a child here."

"I'm not ready for that anyway."

"This is a big concession," said Luke. "Are we supposed to do something in return?"

"Simply work hard on the missions that you have accepted. And be true to each other."

"We will."

"Then I'll leave you to your private world. _Boa noite." _The bellboy left with the usual wave.

We stared at each other. "Well," said Grace. "It looks like I'm your wife now."

"No ceremony—"

"What G-d hath joined, let not man put asunder. Isn't that the definition of marriage?"

"Yeah. But out in the world, you're still Miss Grace Polonsky."

"And I'm going to stay with the name Polonsky, even when we marry out there. Changing my name from 'Polk' was hassle enough--"

"All right, I won't quarrel about that. This is the 21st century. I know you're not a stickler for tradition, Grace, but since you say you're my wife, there's one that I insist on --"

Luke picked up Grace like a bride, and carried her to the suite's ornate bed. She made no objection, and by the time he recovered his breath from the exertion, Grace was already divesting herself of her pajamas. Then she helped Luke out of his. We'll leave it unspoken what happened next. Let's just say that it had been two months since our farewells in Rome. And, here, we didn't have to worry about Joan barging in or banging on the door.

"I'm still confused," Luke said about half an hour later, as we relaxed. "Are we really here together in this bed, wherever here is? Or are we sleeping in our separate beds in Cambridge and Rome? In which case, what did we just do?"

"Do me a favor, Luke, and stop thinking for a while," said Grace, snuggling back in her pillow blissfully. "If I'm willing to put paranoia aside for a while, and accept a gift horse—"

"But you like horses, and I like thinking."

"You're not listening! Lemme show you what I like—".

So we went at it again, this time more playfully. An hour later the room's clock struck six, Western-European Time. It was still dark outside, but it would be dawn in Rome, and we knew:

"It's time to go back."

"But at least now we know we'll be back together, within a month."

"Right." We exchanged a last kiss. "'Til we meet again, Grace."

"_Au revoir_, Luke."

And with that we returned to the real world, ready to meet the challenges of a new day.

**THE END**

(_Author's Note: In answer to Nyklm's review, I revised a sentence to make it clear that the "trips" would be voluntary from now on.)_

_(Author's Note: In case anyone's curious, I thought I'd give the source of the idea. In the 100th episode of the science-fiction series BABYLON 5, four characters who had been killed off earlier in the series visited their loved ones on the night of the Mexican "Day of the Dead". It was a lot more somber than this story, but it did have a great funny line. When one of the live characters browses for a scientific explanation for the magic his girlfriend's ghost says "You know, I can think of better ways of demonstrating your masculinity than hacking into the computer!" _


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